Making “Stupid” Work for You

For at least the time being, I’ve decided not to do any writing that is overtly reflective upon the past year. Nor do I want to do any of those predictive pieces either. The truth is that I’ve done several in the past, when I was writing for various magazines and unfortunately quite a bit of my gloom, doom and even nonsense came true. As a goof in “On San Francisco”, a long defunct magazine, I predicted that an odd cult would take up residence at the base of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. This was back in the 80’s and whatayaknow, it came true.

My last prediction was a few years ago when I told everyone to buy gold. I said “I bet that gold will be up over $1,500 in a couple of years” and I made that prediction when gold was around $500 an ounce. Not too many people listened to me. In fact, I didn’t really listen to me.

The problem of course, is that knowledge these days is pretty overrated. College graduates are struggling to find minimum wage employment. The value of being “expert” is completely lost on the “Google Generation”, who finds that any information they need is just a button away.

And when enough people are mediocre at something, we simply lower the bar and make “that” the standard. The “Best Whatever It Is” is simply the one that has figured out how to manipulate social media the best. The 2012 Presidential Election will most certainly be decided by twitter, YouTube, Facebook and perhaps Google+, LinkedIn and several other social media sites. Who cares about policies, platforms and plans?

So, in looking back at the varied things I’ve learned and experienced, I am reminded of one of my particular “stupid moments”.

I was walking down the street one day, doing a bit of window shopping and daydreaming. As I was crossing a fairly wide and highly trafficked San Francisco street, a car came barreling at me, honking his horn furiously. I actually found myself becoming a deer caught in the headlights. I managed to dive a few inches out-of-the-way as he slammed on his brakes and yelled several profanities at me, concluding with “What are you an idiot?”

It all took place in a very short period of time. I gained my composure and half considered calling this ill-mannered twit out, when I had the realization that I was crossing against the light. Big deal maybe, but with morons like him on the road, it was indeed a very stupid thing I had done. So, I simply looked at him, shrugged my shoulders somewhat apologetically and said “Yes, I guess I am an idiot, sorry.”

The next thing to happen was actually one I wish I had on video. The guy behind the wheel looked absolutely upset at the fact that I didn’t start a confrontation. You could see the smoke coming out of his ears as he tried to figure out what sort of asinine retort might actually work against a true admission of guilt and contrition. He stammered a bit and now, the light which had gone from green to red for him was green once again. I saw his window roll up as the smell of rubber and the screech of a tire had him jamming through the intersection as if he had just finished a pit stop at the Indy 500.

This past year, I’ve found a great deal of comfort and freedom in being able to answer questions with “I don’t know”, sometimes even with “I don’t really care.” And I believe that this year, stupid has set me free. With seemingly much of the world having no issues with being predominantly stupid, yet pretending they’re not, I’ve taken delight in my stupid moments, embracing them and even flaunting them.